Very good cleaning performance. Power washing jets work great. Lightweight.

Cons

Expensive. Cleaning the debris filter is a messy business. Needs to be rescued every so often. Stiff cable.

Bottom Line

The pricey Aqua Products Aquabot Turbo T4RC is a lightweight robotic pool cleaner that uses power washing jets and four scrubbing brushes to keep your pool looking clean and fresh.

If you spend more time cleaning your pool than cooling off in it, it might be time to consider buying a robotic pool cleaner such as the $1,999.99 Aquabot Turbo T4RC from Aqua Products. This robot does a great job of scrubbing, power washing, and vacuuming in-ground pools, and it's lightweight and easy to use. It isn't perfect, though: Every so often it gets stuck at the bottom of the pool, and cleaning the filter is a messy task. The T4RC comes with a handy remote and a sturdy caddy, but it's missing some of the features included with our Editors' Choice, the Polaris 9550 Sport, and it's around $600 more expensive.

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Design and Features The box-shaped Aquabot T4RC looks more like a robot than the Polaris 9550 Sport or the Hayward AquaVac 500, both of which have sportier designs. It measures 13 by 16 by 15 inches (HWD), weighs 20 pounds, and has a blue plastic housing, four blue scrubbing brushes, and a white handle with a blue float ring.

At the top of the housing is a round water exhaust that is 2.5-inch in diameter, and there are two blue tractor-like treads on either side of the robot that propel it through the water and allow it to climb the walls of the pool. The robot uses a gray 75-foot floating cable to draw power and communicate with the head unit. This cable is stiffer and a little harder to manage than the soft cable used on the Polaris 9550, but it is five feet longer. Included in the box is a four-wheel caddy that has a 33-inch handle with hooks for wrapping and storing the cable. The caddy is sturdy and easy to push or pull, and it's a snap to assemble, but you'll need a Philips screwdriver.

The Aquabot's head unit, which powers and controls the robot, is a separate component, which means it has to be carried out when it's time to clean the pool (unlike the Polaris and Hayward head units, which are attached to the caddy). It measures 5 by 8 by 8.5 inches (HWD) and has a handle and a telescoping antenna on top. The front of the unit has a plug for connecting the cable, a Power switch, and a digital timer control panel with a small LED display that tells you how many hours the robot will be running. There are also four buttons, including two arrow buttons for setting run times, a Reset button, and a Continuous Run button which, as the name implies, will have the robot run until you power it down. Unlike the Polaris 9550, which offers two cleaning modes and a weekly schedule timer, the Aquabot is limited to programming single-run times of one to seven hours.

Accessing the debris canister and filter is more complicated than with the Hayward and Polaris robots, both of which use top-mounted lids that open with the push of a button. With the Aquabot, you have to turn the robot on its side and remove the bottom panel assembly, which holds a large white cloth filter bag that resembles a diaper. To clean the filter bag, you have to remove two bag clips and pull the bag off of a wire frame. Unfortunately, there's no way to do this without coming in contact with the muck stuck to the sides of the bag. Cleaning the filter requires several minutes with a high pressure hose in order to remove all of the wet debris. All in all it's a messy procedure that, considering the Aquabot's lofty price, should be easier.

The 5.25-inch remote has one button to control forward and backward motion, left and right directional buttons, a Delay button that stops the robot, a Climb button that tells the robot to go to the nearest wall to clean the sides and waterline, and my favorite, a Speed button that lets you accelerate the robot while using the remote. The speed button comes in handy when you're trying to get to a spot on the other side of the pool. Granted, it doesn't actually make the robot speedy, but it does make it a little quicker.

Performance I tested the Aquabot Turbo T4RC in my 16-by-32-foot in-ground gunite pool, which holds approximately 22,000 gallons of water and ranges in depth from three feet to nine feet. It has a metal ladder at the deep end and three round steps at the shallow end. It is surrounded by several large cedar trees with branches that hang over the pool, as well as two very large oak trees and a crabapple tree, so there's always a fair amount of fine and coarse debris scattered along the bottom. However, I wanted to create a reproducible test, so I tossed in a handful of sand, a handful of grass clippings, and a couple of small acorns.

I set the timer for one hour, placed the robot in the shallow end of the pool, and hit the Start button. The Aquabot immediately went to the nearest wall, climbed it, cleaned the waterline, and came down. It then headed towards the opposite wall and repeated the pattern. It did this three times, shifting slightly towards the deep end on each pass, and on the fourth pass it began to travel the pool lengthwise, from the shallow end to the deep end, shifting slightly after each pass to ensure total coverage.

As was the case with the Polaris and Hayward cleaners, the Aquabot did a fantastic job of cleaning the pool. It handled all of the sand and assorted debris on the bottom and scrubbed the grass clipping that were stuck to the waterline. The power washing jets worked wonderfully, loosening dirt from the gunite surface and sucking it up into the filter bag. The robot left one acorn in the center of the deep end, which it snagged with the help of the remote. The remote was very responsive, reacting to each directional command quickly and accurately. I loved using the Speed button to get the robot down to the deep end (and to the offending acorn) quickly; you can't do this with the Polaris, unfortunately.

Subsequent tests were similar in terms of cleaning performance, but the Aquabot experienced a few hiccups along the way. At one point its handle became wedged against the metal ladder and required my help to free it, and in another instance the robot tipped over on its nose after coming off the steps in the shallow end and was unable to reorient itself.

Conclusion The Aqua Products Aquabot Turbo T4RC works hard to get your pool spotless so you don't have to. Granted, it's one of the more expensive robotic pool cleaners out there, but it offers some useful features including power washing jets and a responsive remote with speed control. Its cleaning performance is top notch, but cleaning out the robot's filter should be easier. Moreover, it became stuck a couple of times and had to be rescued during our tests. If the Aquabot's $2,000 price is too rich for your budget, check out our Editors' Choice, the Polaris 9550 Sport. It's around $600 less expensive and offers a more robust feature set, and you'll never have to get your hands dirty cleaning out the filter.

As a Contributing Editor for PCMag, John Delaney has been testing and reviewing monitors, TVs, PCs, networking and smart home gear, and other assorted hardware and peripherals for almost 20 years. A 13-year veteran of PC Magazine's Labs (most recently as Director of Operations), John was responsible for the recruitment, training and management of the Labs technical staff, as well as evaluating and maintaining the integrity of the Labs testing machines and procedures.
Prior to joining Ziff Davis, John spent six years in retail operations for...
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